


Cardboard City

by dramatorama



Series: comment fic [4]
Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Turk!Vincent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-02
Updated: 2015-06-02
Packaged: 2018-04-02 13:37:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4061983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dramatorama/pseuds/dramatorama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If anything has come with them to Midgar Edge from their lives under the plate, it's the proverb that Turks mean work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cardboard City

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: "Post-game AU where Shinra is still a leading world power."

Yuffie sticks her hands in her pockets, scuffs the toe of her sneakers against the ground. To a careless observer, she's just another slum kid, in the uniform of ruined jeans, greasy cap and straggly hair that mark her out only as one of the thousands of hungry, narrow-eyed teenagers that haunt the streets these days. No work, no money, and very little food: their lives haven't been changed one bit by Meteorfall.

There's a rumour around the cardboard city today that the Turks are in town, and if anything has come with them to Midgar Edge from their lives under the plate, it's the new proverb that Turks mean work, repeated fatalistically from barstools while they mop floors and handed over with the pennies they get for carrying messages. None of the slum kids are quite old enough to know what Yuffie knows about _why_.

Maybe that's why there's more kids around than usual, why Yuffie doesn't even have to bother to pull the peak of her cap down over her eyes: these kids have flocked here from all over, from Mideel and Kalm and the icy north to fulfil Reeve's starry-eyed dream of rebuilding his city. Meanwhile the real powers that be hold their fort fast in Junon, and the only time they think of Mideel or the Sun Coast is when they're driving through and pay weary, unshaven men to clean their shoes while they buy and sell their livelihoods.

She should be in Junon now, actually. She can't go back to Wutai: her father is entertaining Rufus Shinra indefinitely in promise of gil for rebuilding the lands devastated by the Lifestream. He'd sold their integrity, their land, their resources, and Yuffie is coming to the slow, cold realisation that perhaps she is the only thing he has left to barter with Shinra.

Tifa has suggested, tentatively, that she might find it fruitful to visit Junon as only a ninja can: by stealth. Yuffie has never known true fear, but as a (mostly unwilling) member of AVALANCHE she has a healthy respect for Shinra soldiers. Since their merry band are still the top seven Shinra Most Wanted, the ruins of Midgar are ironically the safest place for them to be. She has the wariness of the true survivor, but knows that a visit to Junon could well pay off: one tip-off to the media about any of Shinra's most unsavoury projects could send the remains of their shaky monopoly rolling into the mud. That's why she's still in Midgar.

She's not going to Junon on her own, and her plan is deviously simple. There is one man who has the skills to extract her if things go pear-shaped. Conveniently, he has also experienced Shinra's worst atrocities. The most difficult part will be convincing him to quit the Turks.

Again.

She smiles slyly to herself as she spots the limo approach the slum's cheapest bar, its most notorious knocking shop and the go-to place for cheap, anonymous information. Three suits get out, as per protocol: one stays behind as backup, and two go in and start knocking heads together until someone talks. She's been watching them long enough.

Her guy is still as a stone next to the driver's door, one hand just slightly under the wing of his open jacket ready to draw, as any fool knows. She sucks in a breath, nods to herself. Now or never. She deliberately swaggers past, chewing on her gum and gurning extravagantly. Fakes a stumble right as she goes past him. He has both her wrists wrenched behind her back before her knees can hit the dirt, and he's hauling her up to pat her down for knives when she turns her head and winks at him.

"Hey, Vincent. Long time."


End file.
